Drawing line on personal use

Early in his career as an employment lawyer, Richard Johnson was scrambling to meet a deadline for a client and went to ask a support staff member to prepare legal documents. The staffer was texting back and forth on matters unrelated to work, and Johnson found himself on hold.

“It felt like five minutes but it was probably only 30 seconds,” Johnson recalls. “I was standing there with a file in my hand.”

The incident left Johnson steaming. The documents needed to be sent out that...